


Ante Meridiem

by astraielle, ghoulaesthetics (astraielle)



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Feelings, I guess????, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Introspection, Prompt Fic, Tumblr Prompt, Who tf knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 03:22:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15379578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astraielle/pseuds/astraielle, https://archiveofourown.org/users/astraielle/pseuds/ghoulaesthetics
Summary: Thane gets the call sometime around three in the morning.





	Ante Meridiem

**Author's Note:**

> she can make words work again!!! needed a slight break in posting but i think i might be hitting a rhythm again, we'll see.
> 
> i swapped some things around in my mass effect canons, & elle is now with thane, whereas lee was with that & miranda but is now only with miranda. it Fits better in my head & also makes my shakarian fic and other shrios non-canon compliant with my own stuff. this takes place?? idk. me2 probably near the end. 
> 
> prompt from talizorahs on tumblr was ‘ stay there. i’m coming to get you. ’ for a pairing of your choice!' and i did choose SO here we are

Thane gets the call sometime around three in the morning.

He doesn’t totally mind it. After all, he would’ve been waking on his own within the next hour anyway. And it’s Shepard—her late-night calls were often no less than _stimulating_ , a clear beckoning for him to join her wherever she happened to be on the Normandy and allow them both to indulge in something that each assumed could never be recaptured.

But this one is different.

For one thing, they aren’t on the Normandy. The ship is somewhere down in the lower levels of the Citadel, in for routine maintenance between their Reaper-business. And Thane isn’t in his usual quarters on the ship as a result. He’s holed up in the same hotel as the rest of the onboard crew until the technicians are finished. Technically, it wasn’t shore-leave, but that stopped none of them from treating it as such.

For another thing, Shepard’s voice on the other end of the onmitool isn’t what he was expecting in the slightest. There’s no cocksure sultriness in her voice, no hint of underlying subtext or promises of a late night rendezvous. She sounds disoriented, unclear, not in danger perhaps, but certainly in a deal of distress.

Artificial light peeks in from the cracks in his blinds as he rolls over to actually pick up the call and make some sense of the mumbled words she’s stringing together on the other end.

“Shepard?” His voice sounds rough, creaky with disuse from the night, but his mind is already awake and sharp.

There’s a pause on the other end, as if she’s just registering at this moment that she’d been trying to make a call.

“ _Mm_ —Thane? Is that—hello?” There’s shuffling on the other end, voices in the background, a heavy door opening and closing and then more muffled noises. Shepard’s breathing is heavy and wavering, moving closer and farther away from the receiver in uneven beats.

 _Drunk_ , he decides, half-hoping that’s all she’s ingested for the night. Elle had been more candid with him about her past than he had any right to expect when they began speaking, and he knew that she was no stranger to the sorts of trouble one could get up to under the cover of darkness, artificial or not.

“Shepard,” he repeats again, sitting up fully in the bed, preparing to get up entirely soon. “Where are you? Is everything alright?” It’s hard to tell with Shepard, just how much she’s actually aware of right now. Coherent enough, at least subconsciously, to try and contact someone she trusts.

There’s a pointed pause on the other end. “Dunno,” she finally says firmly. “Started out—I wanted to go out. Forget a bit. I don’t—ugh.” The heavy door noise opens and shuts in the distance as she stops to catch her breath. Laughter filters out behind her and drifts away as Thane’s feet hit the floor and he grabs at his clothes, folded nicely on the chair where he’s left them six short hours ago.

“Still there, Shepard?” He asks, pulling on a jacket a little faster than normal.

“‘M still here. I think.” She giggles, wheezy and half-hearted. It ends in a choked noise. “Ah, fuck, I think—I fucked up Thane. ‘M not human anymore, but I’m not nineteen either.”

“I know,” he replies softly as he finishes putting on a pair of boots. He swipes the room key from the side table and pauses at the door. “Elle? You’re sure you don’t know where you are?” He can track her on his omnitool, if he really needs to, but it would be a small comfort if he knew that she knew.

“I don’t.” It’s the most certain she’s sounded yet. And then, much smaller, “I’m sorry.”

He considers that. “Don’t be.” He leaves the room and sets a brisk pace down the hall and towards the elevators, tapping the screen of his onmitool and setting it to find her location. It picks her up near the lower levels, nowhere close to the big, busy clubs, but in an area that could best be described as a lower budget and much more dangerous version of the Silversun Strip. He almost asked if there was anyone with her, but changed his mind—if there was, he wouldn’t be hearing this call right now, wouldn’t be leaving the hotel at an ungodly hour and grabbing the first Citadel elevator he saw down, down towards where Shepard was.

“I am though,” she insisted. There was no bite to her words. “I didn’t—I don’t know what I’m doing. I never meant for…” Shepard trails off.

“Stay there, _Siha_. I’m coming to get you.” He’s half-expecting her to argue, to insist that she can make it back on her own. Instead, there’s just a tired noise of defeat on the other end and the sound of a door shutting once more.

Thane moves faster.

The Citadel is massive. The shape would lead someone to think otherwise, but the actual living space inside feels near-infinite. Theoretically, you could travel for days, weeks even, and still not see the whole thing. It’s impressive, then, that Thane manages to make it down to Shepard in under half an hour. Even more impressive that her location blip on his screen hasn’t moved more than ten metres from her original place. Either she was listening well for a change, or she really couldn’t move that far to begin with. Either way, it’s a good thing.

It’s a bar he arrives at. Or a club. Perhaps a combination of both. He can hear people inside, rolling crowds living their lives and enjoying the last dregs of nighttime, unbothered by the general filth and disrepair of the place. Shepard must’ve been counting on no one here paying enough attention to the news to recognize her face. Or maybe she just didn’t care. He ignores the front door and instead skirts off to the side—She was either in the alleyway behind or beside the building, that much he could figure from the sounds. The people loitering around the front mostly pay him no mind, save for a surly, rough-looking Asari who leers and gives him an inviting grin, which is promptly ignored. She shouts something incoherent at him as he ducks around the side, before shrugging and going back to her cigarette.

Shepard is at the back, sitting a little ways off from what he assumes was intended as the staff entrance. She’s pitched forward, forehead pressed against her knees and arms covering most of her head. Thane had tried to keep a conversation with her going for most of the journey, but her responses had dwindled in coherency until they were nothing more than three syllable mumbles. Instead, he’d simply asked her to stay on the line until he arrived, no speech necessary. He’d counted her breaths as he moved. But now that he’s here, there’s no reason for him to keep his omnitool on.

Commander Shepard doesn’t look like Commander Shepard. She looks like she belongs in a place like this, which is honestly a bit frightening. He approaches her slowly, one hand extended delicately before him. “ _Siha,_ ” he says, like he’s approaching a wounded animal as he lays a gentle hand on his shoulder.

She moves and makes a noise. The emotion that rolls over him isn’t exactly relieved, but it’s definitely something.

Slowly, slowly, she begins to unfurl. There’s barely any light where they are, crouched on the ground, but she’s squinting when she looks up at him nonetheless. “How’d y’get here?” She asks blearily, the entire question sounding more like one word than a real sentence.

“On foot, by cab a little bit—it wasn’t far from where I was.”

“Oh,” she breathes. Shepard sways gently when she drops her knees down and straightens her legs, only just now noticing the hand resting on her shoulder. It steadies her, and Thane suspects she would have flopped over without it.

“Oh,” she says again, “Good. You didn’t need to—woke you up. I’m sorry.” She leans into him more despite herself, and he moves his hand to wrap a secure arm around her shoulders.

“You didn’t,” he lies smoothly. “I was already on my way when you called.”

She doesn’t seem to hear him. “Wasn’t supposed to go out tonight like this,” she huffs. “But I couldn’t—didn’t sleep. S’too much. Didn’t want to bother anyone else.”

He sits quietly, feels her slow, dragging pulse through her ribs and up her fingertips. She smells like hard liquor and smoke, her dyed-red hair is loose and tangled, and her eye makeup is streaked down her cheeks in shaky black lines and smears. He says nothing and lets her continue.

“Supposed to—keep it together. For everyone. This isn’t—” She cuts herself off, frustrated, turning her face back up towards him. “I can’t—I don’t wanna be here right now. I can’t do anything here. I want to go home, Thane.” Her voice is watery, void of the command she holds on the bridge. Nevertheless, he obliges her.

“Can you lean on me if I help you?” He’s half-up, still holding onto her firm, just in case.

“Maybe?” She offers unsteadily.

It’s a slow process, but eventually, he manages to get her into a nearly-functional standing position with the help of his own body and the grimy wall. Shepard leans on him heavily, although it feels as though he might as well have an arm supporting a bowl of fog instead of an entire human being. She’s small, standing a good head under his own, but she’s always struck him as someone who was remarkably solid, larger than life itself with an energy that could fill and entire highrise floor to ceiling. He’s half convinced that this might not even be the same woman, if he wasn’t so sure of the contrary. There’s no resistance to carrying her. It’s just dead weight.

“We’ll be walking back the short way,” he tells her. She nods numbly beside him, focused intently on where she should be placing her feet next. He considered grabbing a ride for the two of them—no doubt it would be much easier and less stumbling—but there was always a chance that someone would recognize her, and the last thing the woman needed was to wake up and see the mask she was currently wearing plastered all over the news. So the walking route it was, specifically the one with the least amount of foot traffic. It would be a little longer, certainly, but Thane didn’t mind, and he suspected Shepard wouldn’t either.

“I can’t make them listen to me,” she finally says after asking for a break. Her head is spinning, and she needs to not move for a bit. “About the Collectors. The Reapers. Anything. I can’t, I can’t, _I can’t_. And then—” She sucks in a hard, shuddering breath, tipping her head back against the wall, eyes closed to the city lights.

“They will,” he assures her, though he’s not so sure himself as he tucks a few sweaty strands of hair behind her ear. “It’s an uphill battle, but if there’s anyone who could succeed at it, it would be you.”

“People are going to die,” she laughs hollowly, “A whole lot of people are gonna fuckin’ die, and it’s going to be because I can’t do my job well _enough_.”

“Even more would perish if you didn’t do anything at all,” he reminds her. “Are you alright to move again?”

She shrugs. “I might vomit on your shoes at some point, but sure, let’s do it.”

He moves her again into a secure position at his side, ducking them both down slightly as two Turians pass by, barely giving them a second glance.

“Thane?” She asks quietly, head still hanging.

“Yes?”

“I’m—I’m not myself yet but I still feel—I’m sorry. For pushing myself on you like this. You don’t—you should only see me when I’m better. At my top. When I’m not just—I’m worse than I was on Earth, you know?” She laughs wetly. “Fuckin—shit, I don’t know. I don’t know why I do this to myself. Why I _did_ this to myself. I can’t do anything for anyone if I can’t see straight. We needed to be on guard right now? We’re fucked. I’m dead or worse,” she grimaces. She wasn’t crying, not yet, but she could if she stopped thinking about it to hard.

“That’s enough.” It’s a gentle admonishment, but it’s unyielding. _We can talk about this tomorrow_ , is at the bottom of his ribs, but he let’s it go silently. They would, he knew, regardless of whether or not she actually remembered it. “It’s not… It’s understandable,” he says, “that every now and then you’d wish to step outside of things.” It was tempting even for himself—he could only imagine how it must have felt behind the face of the movement.

She’s giggling again, mostly under her breath, the meaning behind his words lost on her and only taking pleasure in the sound of his voice. He knows that there’s no real point in trying to get to the root of the issue right now—and perhaps even less so when she’s sober once more, because that’s when the walls were build back up and sealed, even to him. Oh, he’d see cracks, that much was certain. But never anything as candid as now.

Shepard twists in his arms and turns her face towards him. He thinks for a moment that she might ask them to stop, that she might actually need to be sick, but instead, she raises up on her toes as best as possible and presses an uneven kiss to the side of his mouth.

Thane had made love to Elle many times, under different circumstances and in a variety of locations, but he’d steadfastly refused to allow anything if she (or he, or both of them) were this inebriated.

“ _Siha_ ,” he says, framing her face with his hands and slowly lowering her back down.

“I know, I know,” she sighs, leaning forward and resting her forehead against his collarbone, fist weakly holding the fabric of his coat as if she’s afraid he’ll slip through her fingers. “I know,” she says a third time.

“Later,” he promises, starting up their pace once more.

“Yeah,” she echoes as they move sluggishly, together as one with Thane leading and Shepard stumbling into his side. “Later.”


End file.
